IMO, we should try to get major open-source software that more or less cares about building on [Open]Solaris to build cleanly using either gcc/g++ or Sun Studio (11 or later, since that's free as in beer, reducing availability excuses).
Getting to where software will build with more than one compiler may improve the software by finding bugs or non-portable usages, or at least identifying more areas that might need special handling on different platforms. And having two competing compilers should not only improve the software, it should ultimately improve both compilers (which is why I think the Sun Studio suite on Linux is a good idea, and also that, assuming its usage is similar to what it is on Solaris, that having it widely available on Linux should again make it easier to build programs with Studio on Solaris). Of course, any work on getting something to build with both compilers should be fed back to the project developers, so that it gets rolled in. Until such time as one compiler "wins" on Solaris, I think KDE and company should particularly be built with both, since C++ code won't link between the two compilers. If there are any GNOME-related libs written in C++, perhaps they should be done both ways too. That way, if someone finds a program they don't already have precompiled that they want to build, and don't have time to rework it to build with Studio, they can build it with gcc with a minimum of dependencies not already suitably built. As long as they at least feed back to the developers that they'd like to see it build with Studio as well. Maybe we need someone who has reworked software to build with Studio to write up why, and what sort of problems they had to take care of, so with that plus pointers to Studio being free (and to the Linux beta), there would be some good info ready to pass to project developers. Given those things, the only value I see in which compiler is better arguments is to figure out why and when, and improve whichever needs it. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
